Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/160

Rh neither helmets nor shining coats of mail, but only graceful tunics with smooth fringes, and shields, and beautiful, finely wrought collars to protect their bodies and necks and gentle heads,’ whereas the Danes were arrayed in strong coats of mail, of thick black iron, and carried in their hands polished heavy battle shields, upon which the weapons of the Irish made little impression. There is no doubt that one cause of the success of the Danish hosts was due to the difference of armour; and I think also, that there is no doubt that it was the striking appearance of the Danish armies, entirely clad in dark metal armour, and not the colour of their skin or hair, which gained for them from the Irish the name of Dubh-Gaill, or Dark Foreigners. It seems to have been the first time that the Irish had been brought into contact with mail-clad troops.

The manner of their attack which most astonished the Romans was the fighting from war-chariots, which were often, like the chariots of the British followers of Boadicea, provided with scythes attached to the wheels, which made terrible havoc among the hosts of the enemy. ‘The Gallic cavalry,’ says Livy, ‘charged the Roman legions by a method of fighting that was new to them, and which threw the ranks into confusion. A number of the enemy, mounted on chariots and cars, made towards them with such a prodigious clatter from the trampling of the horses and rolling of the wheels, as affrighted the horses of the Romans, unaccustomed to such tumultuous operations’ (Bk. X. ch. xxviii.). Tearing their way through the ranks, the Roman soldiers were trampled and bruised to death. Cæsar, in the Gallic War, also comments on the terrific effect produced by an onset of the war-chariots of the Britons. ‘The following,’ he says, ‘is the way in which they fight from war-chariots. First, they ride up and down in every direction, hurling their darts, and through the mere terror inspired by the horses and rattling of the wheels, they throw the ranks into confusion. When they have wound themselves in among the squadrons of the cavalry, they leap down from their chariots, in such a VOL. III.